


7.07: This Land of Unbelief and Fear

by idlesuperstar



Series: The Crooked Roads [8]
Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-04 14:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesuperstar/pseuds/idlesuperstar
Summary: He’ll find the mole. He’ll find who sold him out. It’s what he’s wanted foryears.





	7.07: This Land of Unbelief and Fear

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sidelong look at ep 7:07 from Lucas' brainpan. If you've not seen the ep then it won't make much sense. Go and watch that instead. 
> 
> Title from William Blake's [ _The Land of Dreams_](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-land-of-dreams-4/). Intertitles are Proverbs of Hell from [ _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_](http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html).
> 
> Series notes are [here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/136827).

Lucas wakes from a muddled dream of his schooldays to the blurred buzzing of his phone.

It’s Harry.

He blinks the smears of memory away to focus on Harry’s voice.

‘Look in your bedside drawer.’

Of course there’s a secret dossier taped there. He scrubs his eyes. He doesn’t want to think about Harry rooting through his bedside table. There’s lube in there for fuck’s sake.

‘I’m being set up, we’ve got a mole in Section D.’

Adrenaline crystallises Lucas’ thoughts into one bright certainty: it is someone he knows.

Not just a faceless minion from another floor. Anger burns in his stomach, his mind flitting through colleagues, judging, questioning, even as Harry is still speaking.

One word cuts through the noise in his head. Moscow.

_Moscow._

His reaction is so visceral he can barely parse it. He is aware, objectively, that he’s gripping his phone too hard. That Harry’s voice continues. That he is sat in bed, the sheets crumpled, his eyes gritty.

It’s all clear and yet unimportant.

Something is roiling through him. An unholy mixture of fear, anger, hurt, dread and - he can barely acknowledge it - anticipation.

_Moscow._

‘I’m sorry, Lucas,’ Harry says. He actually sounds as if he means it.

 _If you had a thousand years, Harry,_ Lucas thinks, _and apologised every day, it would still not be enough time to forgive you for what you’ve asked of me._

But all he says aloud is ‘I’m on my way.’

 

* * *

 

He spends his time on the plane reviewing the dossier again and again, as if repetition will make a difference.

He remembers trying to revise for his O Levels while his mum was ill. How the information slid off the surface of his brain, how work had been a struggle for the first time ever.

He’d hated chemistry anyway.

If they’d said, _Lucas, one day this will be useful; here’s how to make a bomb from household objects,_ maybe it would have sunk in. Although no doubt his parents would have complained.

 

He stares out of the window, trying to centre himself. Harry’s contact depends on him.

And it’s more  than that - she has the answer to a question that has burned in his mind for eight years.

_Who betrayed me?_

 

The sky is bright with sunlight above the clouds, clean and white like a child’s idea of heaven.

There’s a peace and beauty in the blanket of cloud. A vision of the glory of the universe. It’s impossible not to be awed by it.

Water vapour and mechanics, that’s all, but an atavistic sense of wonder transcends the facts nevertheless.

He gazes unblinking into the endless sky, finding a calm he’s been missing since he was dragged into consciousness.

 

After a while, relaxed and peaceful, he allows himself to unwrap the small dark thought that he has buried deep in the corner of his mind.

He is going to Moscow. And Oleg is in Moscow. Somewhere.

He breathes deeply, steadily, lets the thought unfold.

The bad aeroplane coffee is acidic in his gut.

Moscow is a giant city.

The FSB should not know he is coming.

Oleg will not know.

 

His goal is to get in and out quickly; to get the intel and disappear again, unseen. The FSB will never even know. He will be invisible. This is the ideal. This is his aim.

He’ll find the mole. He’ll find who sold him out. It’s what he’s wanted for _years_. It will save Harry.

 

He will be in Moscow and Oleg will not know and he - Jesus fuck - he _wants_ him to know.

 

This is the dark shame that coils through him.

The odds of him being on the same continent as Oleg again are slim. Of being in the same _city_ -

 

He holds the thought out in the clear white light of the heavens, and it is smaller and blacker and even more shameful out in the open.

 

If he could find a way to see Oleg and not compromise the op, then he would do it. It would be suicide, and it would wreck everything, and the FSB would find out eventually.

He realises the idiocy of that thought. The FSB would find out immediately because _Oleg_ is FSB.

And still, with those odds, a visceral part of him wants it.

Wants Oleg to know, and to _come and find him._

 

He looks at his watch.

Five minutes, he thinks. You can think of it for five minutes and then pack it away and get on with the op.

It worked for his chemistry revision. He’s sure it can work for this.

The clouds stretch away to the horizon, bright, vast and impersonal.

 

* * *

 

The sun is bright as he walks out of the airport, grateful for a moment’s pause to recalibrate.

He’d expected to be off-balance, this first return. Instead he’s overwhelmed with how familiar it feels, how right.

He’d avoided anything Russian since he’d been back in London. He could have sought out the Russian enclaves, sat in cafes listening to old men talking of the old days, but he’d deliberately not.

And now he’s surrounded by it again and it feels like an old friend. It’s not what he expected.

It will make the op easier though.

If he doesn’t get too comfortable, that is.

 

~

 

He hails a cab. He knows Lubyanka knocked the englishness out of his Russian accent, and the driver barely acknowledges him, knows he isn’t a holidaymaker.

He concentrates on looking bored, weary, just another bloke in the city, all the while keeping an eye out for tails.

He watches the city flash past.

He thinks of that first night back in London, watching the night city from the back of the car, barely believing it. Watching Harry being unsure, wondering if he could be trusted.

This would be the ultimate Harry bluff, of course. If Harry were the mole.

Lucas has calculated the odds, weighed up the evidence for and against, but in the end it comes down to faith.

He’s put his faith in Harry, rather as Harry has put his faith in him.

He has to believe in _something._

 

_* * *_

 

It’s busy on the streets, noisy and bustling, but he takes a moment, and phones Ros. He needs to check in with her, to tether himself to something trustworthy.

Connie answers. ‘I’m afraid she’s with the in-laws, they’ve rather taken up residence.’

Six are in the building then. Harry must not be, he’d never allow the sister service to take over. Where the fuck is he? Christ, was his call to Lucas the last act of a free man?

He’s scanning the street for pavement artists, but so far it’s clean. Connie is fishing, albeit subtly.

‘I’m on a little antiques buying jaunt,’ he says, heading her off. He keeps his voice calm, relaxed. He can’t trust anyone, he knows. It’s hard won knowledge.

A girl in front of him stumbles, catching her ridiculous heel on the pavement, and swears loudly. Fuck. He dismisses Connie breezily, but he knows she’ll have heard. She has ears like a bat and a long, long history with Russia.

Shit. He told Harry he’d keep this under wraps, and he’s let it slip. He glares at the girl, watches her walk away oblivious to what she’s done.

He keeps moving.

 

* * *

 

Getting to the flat wasn’t difficult; he took a circuitous route full of doubling back and false trails just to be certain he wasn’t followed. Getting into it was almost as easy. Either this woman is slack, or she has nothing to hide. Lucas assumes it’s the latter, considering she’s an old contact of Harry’s.

He sits and waits. He makes himself as unthreatening as he can.

He is well practiced at the art of appearing submissive.

When she comes in he’s surprised at how normal she looks. Like someone’s mum. But she is instantly alert, steely-eyed and holding back panic.

He holds out the ring to her, the one from the dossier, and all her attention is on it as he stands. Her eyes when she looks at him are fierce. She turns the radio on.

‘Are they listening?’ he asks, in Russian, not knowing how good her English would be after all this time. She favours him with a look reminiscent of his old Literature teacher when he’d asked a stupid question.

‘Harry asked me to apologise for not being in touch,’ Lucas says to her in English. Christ, how long has she been waiting for this moment? ‘He said he hoped you’d understand.’

She smiles, a sad, forgiving smile and says, ‘ _Когда каждый любит кого - то, все проясняет - где пойти, что сделать - все это заботится о себе, и каждый не должен спросить никого о чем - нибудь’._

‘When you love someone, everything is understood,’ he paraphrases. Christ, she really has been waiting years for Harry, hasn’t she? And she understands. He can’t quite believe the fortitude it would take.

She laughs. ‘Gorky’.

These bloody doomed, romantic Russians, Lucas thinks. Of course she’d quote Gorky at him. Harry wouldn’t take up with someone without a taste for literature. He thinks of Oleg quoting Pushkin, Tolstoy. _Christ_.

He is desperately trying not to think of how long he would wait for Oleg, if Oleg asked him.

He pushes the thought away. ‘Do you have what we need?’

His earlier assumption was right, she has nothing here to hide. She’s a classic agent, after all. The package is elsewhere. She’s got him a new passport as well.

‘They know already that you’re not in London.’  

Christ almighty. He knows they’d be the same, if it were an FSB agent turning up in London. It doesn’t help him feel less scared.

‘Harry said you were formidable,’ he tells her. It’s the truth, and she deserves it. If they know he’s here, then she knows - despite her stoicism, despite what Harry might have promised, years ago - that she won’t get out.

 

As he leaves, he clocks men who look like agents, very good agents but agents nevertheless. There’s nothing he can do to help her. He knows this. It doesn’t help. He evades their eyes, folds into himself until he is just another Muscovite in a hurry.

She knew, all those years ago, what she was getting into. She must have.

Just like he did.  

Except he didn’t foresee everything. He never expected Oleg.

 

* * *

_Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion._

 

The Bedouin Bar is a lap dancing club. Of fucking course it is. It’s eleven in the morning and he really isn’t ready for this.

He’s not sure he’d ever be ready for this. The things he does for his country.

He orders a large vodka because it’s the only drink he thinks he can stomach, and before he can settle down a girl is sitting on him, writhing in his lap.

He has, in the past, had to fuck people for his country. It’s one of the first things they tell you in training, after the psych tests and the questions about sexual orientation.

It’s not something that happened often, but when it did, he did his best to make it real. This is something else. This is the least sexy thing he has ever experienced.

He is trying to detach himself from the girl when she tells him who she is.

‘Pretend to be a tourist happy to be with a sexy Russian girl,’ she hisses in his ear. She smells of expensive perfume, she is lithe and light and beautiful and she is grinding into him and it is almost unbearable how little he feels.

 

He calls for champagne, acting drunk, puts his hands on her waist, and she rattles off information into his ear, quick and competent, all the while writhing and smiling and acting like he’s a sex god. She is really _really_ good. That line about Ginger Rogers flashes into his mind: everything Astaire did, backwards and in heels. That’s how good this girl is.

He smiles at her, genuine in his admiration, feeling, finally, a flicker of something, and she licks his ear and tells him to go downstairs for the package.

He detaches himself clumsily, lets her take his coat, feeling awkward and boorish before her, and heads off in the vague direction of the gents, leaving her keeping a watchful eye on the FSB agent who is lurking in the corner of the bar.

 

~

 

_What is now proved was once only imagin’d_

 

Everything is where she said it would be. There’s a passport for him, just as Maria said. He is indebted to clever women today.

And there’s a photograph. An old one, from the seventies. He can tell by the clothes.

And by how young Connie looks.

 

He gets the burner phone out and rings Harry. Someone not Harry - the prick from Six - answers, so he hangs up. Ros’ line is busy. Fucking hell. He’s got the biggest scoop since Philby and everyone’s on the fucking phone.

He gets through to Ben, finally. ‘Ben,’ he nearly yells, ‘Connie is the mole, she is the _Russian mole_ ’, and the door slams open and the FSB thug barrels through it.

 

Lucas has fucking had it with the FSB today. _They can’t even be bothered_ , he thinks, as he blocks a blow and drives a fist into the man’s gut, _to send the good ones after me_.

The goon comes at him with a knife, and suddenly Lucas has no more patience. He’s tired, he’s been up since five, he’s just found out one of his closest colleagues sold him and the service down the river, he can’t find a flicker of a hard on when a sexy girl is grinding in his lap, and he’s hollowed out with longing for the man who is in this city and yet so far beyond his reach. He has had _enough_.

 

He breaks the thug’s arm with one well-placed slam of his hand, feeling the bone shatter satisfyingly under his palm. While he’s screaming, Lucas forces his head into the sink full of dirty water. The chain for the plug makes an impromptu garotte. He waits, tightening his grip, for the struggling to stop.

He feels remarkably clear-headed.

 

Finally, there is silence. He picks up the package, takes a shabby coat from a hook, and heads out up the back stairs. He is not even breathing hard. He hails a taxi, and again his luck holds, and there is blessed silence from the driver.

He’s pissed off about leaving his coat. That was a good coat. It was the first thing he bought after he got back.

 

His passport picture is terrible, they’ve done an excellent job of it. The fuckers have made him American. His American accent is not his best.

They have shaved a year off his age though. It’s a good job the picture is so bad.

  


He leans back, relaxing, even though he knows he’s not free and clear. He tries calling Ben again, just to check he’s on the case, but there’s no reply. It’s fine, he’ll try again at the airport.

He takes the film from the envelope. It’s actual microfilm, he feels like he’s in a le Carré novel for a minute. Although he’s not sure he can picture Peter Guillam drowning someone in the kitchen of a Russian lapdancing club. Did they even _have_ lapdancing clubs in the seventies?

 

So. What does this film have on it that is more revealing than the photo of Connie?

  


* * *

 

_One thought fills immensity_

 

He gazes out of the plane window, clear white heaven as far as he can see. He can relax now. He turns the film idly in his hands.

 

He didn’t expect a sense of triumph at getting it, and getting out. He knew it would be dangerous, and he’s left dead bodies behind. Just because Maria knew what she was doing, doesn’t make her death any less wasteful. He hopes the girl - Katarina - will be alright.

 

In the bright unflinching light above the earth, he unfurls that small dark shameful thought again.

He is safe, he is free, and he has no hope now of Oleg finding him. It’s a balance of sorts, and it’s a bitter one.

He thinks again of Maria, of her unflinching loyalty to Harry. Twenty-odd years of it.

The worst of it is that he can understand her only too well.

 

He turns his head to the light again, and tells himself, _five minutes. You can think of it for five minutes and then put it away._

 

The clouds stretch on, unending, dazzling, implacable.

 

* * *

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The Gorky quote actually translates as 'When one loves somebody everything is clear - where to go, what to do - it all takes care of itself and one doesn't have to ask anybody about anything.' Which is super easy to find online. Harder to find is the actual Russian version, so I've used an online translator for that. Any Russian speakers, feel free to correct it. _Please_.
> 
> [jennytheshipper](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennytheshipper/pseuds/Jennytheshipper) cast her Burrowers eyes over this, and might, just *might* be the reason I threw a couple of le Carré refs in as well. 
> 
> For the purposes of this series, Lucas is the same age as Richard Armitage (I'm not actually sure what age he's meant to be in the telly box.) This is because your author is a lazy sod, and 17 days older than RA. Hey presto - less research.


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